Describing Eugene is harder than just some simple throw-away stereotype. Maybe that’s why I spend my time walking around trying to describe it in pictures, as it’s often more effective than words. It was the Ford Tempo parked next to one of our big new student apartment buildings downtown that first caught my eye. It’s one of those cars that typifies the extreme side of CC-loving Eugene. But then as I got close to it, I saw the other extreme: a dark, brooding flat-gray Lamborghini Gallardo, parked just a few spots away. It represents the polar opposite face of Eugene. And this shot caught them both together. Opposites do attract…me.

The Gallardo was parked when I first saw it. I walked over to get a close up, when I saw it was occupied, by what I knew it would be occupied by: one of our many very wealthy Chinese students at the U of Oregon, who arrive with a blank check to buy whatever they fancy, although this car is obviously not brand new anymore. We covered this topic here.

The Gallardo was built through 2013, so this student is presumably “slumming it” by having had to buy a used one, maybe from another student who returned home with his coveted American degree.

He fired up the V10 with a nasty snarl, and then ever so slowly and timidly, backed out.

And then, engine blubbering and snarling (at barely above idle speed) ever so slowly, puttered off. There are a few exceptions, but the great majority of these Chinese students who buy these exotics have obviously never driven before, and they inevitably drive very slowly. Like as in holding up traffic, in their supercars. It can be a real pain to get behind one of them.

Here’s another one I caught a while back, doing barely 25 mph in a 30 mile zone. Oh, these poor supercars, that were designed for such a different life. What irony.

Now please don’t get me wrong: I don’t begrudge these kids their toys one bit. And they stimulate our local economy, although there’s no Lamborghini dealer yet. And I find the whole thing rather amusing.

What it really has done is solidly and pounded down any coffin nails that were at risk of slightly loosening in my feelings toward supercars. Thanks to these kids, I’d feel super-stupid in one. And they’ve rather ruined it for most of the kids in town who might be tempted to feel even slightly that way. If any kids these days even have any interests in such things anymore.

Which of course explains why so many kids that are into cars drive old…curbside classics, like that Tempo, and the Mustang next to it. Much cooler.

Of course, there might come a time when the rich Chinese kids catch on, and start buying up all the old Tempos. Then we’ll know the CC revolution has really come.

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FWIU the whole point is to bring the car back to China under a loophole that allows Chinese citizens returning from abroad to bring in a car they’ve owned for a while with far less in import duty than would otherwise be payable, and then flip it at a huge profit.

Sort of like the Bentley Continental GT and its Flying Spur sister. Seeing either of those is no special thing, anymore; at the same time, the Continental series has really made the Bentley brand profitable.

And both the Bentley and the Lamborghini are chock-full of German electronics that will, one day, leave somebody stranded. Not that either of those brands was the epitome of reliability before VW owned it…

You just listed the cars dominating Ocean Drive and Collins Ave. in South Beach Miami.
When you take a closer look, you cannot overlook the sign from the place which services the clientele for these cars locally.

Someone obviously got themselves a suveneer with the emblem. Must go with the territory of daily driving a Lamborghini.

The tempo immediately caught my eye, it’s is a rarer sight than a Gallardo by far(and my least favorite Lamborghini), but the Mustang GT of the same era in completely unmolested form next to it really caught my eye. Late Foxbody GTs are either A. clapped out trailer park style B. “LXized” removing the GFX and cheese grater tails, or turned into a 93 Cobra clone using the widely available aftermarket parts to do do.

Super cars are pretty much my least favorite kind of cars. Yeah, they have big engines, yeah they are extremely expensive but to me, they all blend together. Whether a Lamborghini, a McLaren, or any of the others, I could care less.

Give me one and I’d immediately sell it for a boatload of Broughams and put the rest in the bank.

Yes, me too, we must be clones! Flick the McFerrarighini and get a mid 70’s Continental and an early 70’s Fleetwood Talisman in red, an Imperial and a woodgrain Mercury Colony Park wagon from the same era, and call it good

There’s a Caucasian kid at the University of Cincinnati who drives a neon robin’s egg blue late model Lambo…my son tells me he’s a member of a fraternity and his daddy lets him take it to school on weekends to troll for girls. He says the guys are much more impressed than the girls, whatever that’s worth.

I’d take the Mustang…I have NO desire to be seen in an exotic car…just not my thing. I like to blend in.

If he only knew how women reacted to my triple white Cadillac Coupe dé Ville I drove from the age of 25 and 9 years forward.
It took be aback that women would step in and sit in the passengers seat, whilst I had stepped out for a second and turned my back looking for something.

The worst thing, though, happened when a women asked if it was OK with me that she had her picture taken (by another woman) with my car.
All I could possibly imagine was her standing there next to it.
Big was my surprise, when my boss’ wife asked we if I was aware that the woman had climbed up onto the hood of my car.

It really p….. me off, but I started counting to 10 instead, because I was at work and the woman was a guest at the hotel.

All a bit absurd to me, as I always have been known for not being a woman’s man.
All my car friends knew that, why their girlfriends for them were safe with me, if they needed an early ride home.

My later Cadillacs or my present Continental Mark IV never had the same effect on women, but I do get positive comments from men of all ages from time to time when I pump gas.

I will not get into the responses I get in general, when I cross the border to Germany, as it is not always pretty.

Wow, an early Tempo (my guess is an ’85), those are extremely rare these days, it’s been a long time since I have seen anything built between 1984-87, especially the first two model years with the recessed seal beam headlights.

Ha ha, yes that Mustang is a little cheesy, but I’d sure rather have that than a 25mph Lambo.

Actually Roadkill guys did an experiment with that, they parked a rented Lamborghini and a Rat Rod near the beach and watched what happened. Guys drooled over the Lambo, but the girls were interested in the Rod.

My then-wife and I wanted a bigger car than our Escort. And we insisted on one with a manual transmission. So we bought a white one (not a favorite color) because it had a 5-speed manual and was in our range.

It also had no A/C. So we paid the cost of the option to have it installed (that was a big mistake; it never worked that well).

While not NEARLY as exciting as a Lamborghini, it suited our purposes. My former wife drove it for quite a long time until something happened that cost too much money to fix.

I wonder if what you’re seeing with 25 mph supercars is equal parts timid drivers and bitter acceptance of the fact that they’re driving ticket magnets. I had an officer go out of his way (understandably) to follow teenage me when I drove an MR2, so I can imagine what life as a Lambo driver must be like. One more advantage for the Tempo. 😉

On a bittersweet but ultimately uplifting note, there was a gentleman in the DC area who drove a Lamborghini and dressed as Batman to help seriously ill children. He died tragically, unfortunately, but did a lot of good along the way. *That’s* a supercar used the right way, in my humble opinion.

Agree on Lamborghini Batman. One article claimed he had switched the Lambo for one of those sixties’ Barris Batmobile replicas. I wonder if that’s what broke down on the highway which led to his death. Frankly, for today’s Batman, a Lamborghini seems more appropriate. OTOH, maybe the campy, cartoonish sixties’ Batman is a bit more appropriate for kids than the modern Dark Knight.

Regardless, I can’t imagine the brief joy he gave to those suffering children, and arriving in an exotic, low-slung Lamborghini would have been part of that. A real tragedy.

It’s the same deal at Michigan State with the wealthy international students and the exotic luxury cars, and there are a LOT of them (not sure how I missed your prior article about that). Some of the luxury apartment complex parking ramps are completely populated by Audi/BMW/Porsche/Mercedes/Lambo/Maseratis/etc. It’s really an odd phenomenon and quite a contrast to the dented Impalas and Pontiacs that all the local students and townies drive.

I read a newspaper article in the Detroit Free Press about how some of them actually abandon their cars at the airport when they leave the country after finishing their degree! They have to realize what they’re doing, but are simply too rich to care about reselling them. Apparently many of the cars are leased as well (at least the “less expensive” Audi/BMW/Mercedes are… I don’t even know if you can lease a Lambo, and there are definitely only a handful of those)

I’ve also seen many international students leave expensive furniture and electronics sitting at the dumpster when they move out, and give away pricey four-figure jewelry/purses to American students like they’re casually handing out sticks of gum. I can’t say I hold any ill will against them either, and it does make the community vastly more diverse than a typical Midwestern city, but it’s just crazy to think that there are people in the world who are that wealthy. Perhaps what I find even odder is that there are thousands and thousands who, with all that money at their disposal, choose to come study at a run-of-the-mill state university. Not that MSU or UO are bad schools, but it seems a little dull considering these billionaire kids could attend pretty much college in the entire world.

I wonder what the academic standards are at MSU or OU versus a place like, say, Harvard or Oxford. Maybe it’s a bit easier for a pampered, wealthy foreign kid to make it through one of the former as opposed to the latter. Then you have to wonder what, exactly, are they going to do with the degree. For business purposes in the US, a degree from MSU or OU would seem sufficient.

Those Cultural Trust plates were recently issued and I am not too surprised that the owner has failed to apply the registration stickers; I hope they get a ticket. I am going to have to see if I can find a Super Car or two when I visit Eugene next time. At least the car seems to be holding up well. I would have thought that campus living and Oregon roads would be harder on the car.

Despite the increasingly common stories in the last few years, about wealthy foreign students driving supercars, I really hadn’t noticed that in my area. Most supercars around here are driven by (sometimes only slightly) older Silicon Valley types. But today I saw a very young man driving a white Lamborghini just a few blocks from the university. And yesterday, I saw another young man driving a white Topaz. While not exactly a Tempo, close enough … I’d say the CC Effect strikes again!